Higher Education in a Warming World

Last night about 200 people came to Thomas building to hear and see "Changing the Moral Climate on Climate Change."  The Centre Daily Times reports today:

Penn State professors Michael Mann, Donald Brown, Janet Swim and Rick Schuhmann, and graduate student Peter Buckland spoke Monday evening at “Changing the Moral Climate on Climate Change,” a talk that focused on climate change denial. Mann is director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center and part of the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Susannah Barsom, with the university’s Center for Sustainability, moderated the event, which included a question and answer session.  

See images of the event here or our sister publication, Voices of Central Pennsylvania.

The five speakers walked the audience through the dilemmas climate change, climate change disinformation and various kinds of climate change denial create. In particular,  they addressed why and how universities should do better to confront these issues.

How Should Bob Stop the Train from Hitting that Child and Dog?

Let’s start with a little thought experiment from Peter Singer’s “Singer Solution to World Poverty.”

Bob is close to retirement. He has invested most of his savings in a very rare and valuable old car, a Bugatti, which he has not been able to insure. The Bugatti is his pride and joy. In addition to the pleasure he gets from driving and caring for his car, Bob knows that its rising market value means that he will always be able to sell it and live comfortably after retirement. One day when Bob is out for a drive, he parks the Bugatti near the end of a railway siding and goes for a walk up the track. As he does so, he sees that a runaway train, with no one aboard, is running down the railway track. Looking farther down the track, he sees the small figure of a child very likely to be killed by the runaway train. He can't stop the train and the child is too far away to warn of the danger, but he can throw a switch that will divert the train down the siding where his Bugatti is parked. Then nobody will be killed —but the train will destroy his Bugatti. Thinking of his joy in owning the car and the financial security it represents, Bob decides not to throw the switch. The child is killed. For many years to come, Bob enjoys owning his Bugatti and the financial security it represents (picture courtesy of Eastern Horizon).

Bob's conduct, most of us will immediately respond, was gravely wrong. Unger agrees. But then he reminds us that we, too, have opportunities to save the lives of children.

Most of us will respond this way. My students often hem and haw on the matter but when confronted with the actual value of children’s lives versus the value of a Bugatti, they acquiesce and agree that Bob should put the Bugatti in front of the train. We can and should sacrifice for the health of others. I can be happy without a Bugatti.

Now complicate the story a lot. Imagine there were two people who came and talked to Bob. One begins carefully and calmly explaining that there is a train coming well before he can see or even hear it. The train will certainly kill the child but it can be stopped if he goes down the rail and throws some switches that will slow the train down and divert it. There is another man dressed to the nines who shows up and says there is nothing to worry about. The kid will be fine. Everything is fine.

Taking Out the Keystone and Building Something Else

A "keystone" plays an integral role in an arch of a bridge or any span. It is the incredible wedge maintaining the whole vault's structural integrity. If you want to call something necessary, call it the keystone.

So calling the Keystone XL pipeline a "keystone" is to repeat the name of a thing deemed necessary. It's to say that we absolutely need the pipeline to the tar sands if we are to continue having what we have. But some people won't have it.

As we reported last fall, local Toni Brink decided to protest the Keystone XL pipeline and was subsequently arrested along with over two thousand other citizens. Before leaving she said, "I think it’s really important. Future of life on our planet depends on it.” Like Josh Fox, climate activist and environmental leader Bill McKibben, consumption critic and author Naomi Klein, climate scientist James Hansen, and others, the she recognizes that climate change is real, it's upon us now, and that investing in the dirtiest form of petroleum extraction and production constitutes an enormous loss.

For its opponents, this pipeline is the keystone of a bridge that mustn't be built. It's a bridge at the edge of the world that leads to a climate nightmare. It sort of wraps up the problem of sustainability in one package.

The current Republican house continues to fight for the Keystone XL after President Obama nixed it last month. They are still citing inflated jobs numbers and ignoring a host of human health, water, air, land, and climate problems, not the least of which is the continued despoliation of a swath of Alberta the size of Florida. People like McKibben have joined with Friends of the Earth, the Rainforest Action Network, the Sierra Club, and and the ever-justice-minded Occupy groups have banded together to get 500,000 petitions and letters sent to the U.S. Senate to fight the newest move.

It seems the current Republican house leadership will not stop pushing for new fossil fuel development. In the last 40 years, there hasn't been this much environmentally-related rancor. Some see it as a sign that the old way is crumbling and doing whatever it can do to hang on. The oil barons, the coal tycoons, and the gas giants will spend more money and more resources to get at less and less fossil fuel. And to do that, they have to spend even more to corrupt our politics, paying enormous sums to political campaigns and even more on lobbying.

People like Richard Heinberg, a fellow of the Post Carbon Institute likely read this as the desperate strangulation of an industry clutching its bags of money and lashing out. But at some point, tired of being abused, we will turn to more harmonious and sustainable ways of doing things. We'll take the bricks that were going to build that bridge off the end of the world and build something much better.

At least some of the future of life on earth might depend on it. That's what Toni might say anyway.

Denialism, Hockey Sticks, Climate Wars, and Radicalism

Today I went to Dr. Michael Mann's talk at the Penn State Forum, "Confronting the Climate Change Challenge." It was a talk meant to prelude and outline his forthcoming book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. In it, he laid out the scientific case for climate change, the validity of "the hockey stick" and climate change models since James Hansen's in the 1980s, and the subsequent valid predictions climate scientists have made. Depending on our fossil fuel choices, we will have different futures.

Already we have a world where gardeners, hikers, hunters, anglers, and farmers already see climate change in North America. Species of plants and animals are migrating north for warmer temperatures. Others, ill-adapted for a warmer world including polar bears and walruses, are being selected out. The world is changing and it's getting plainer and plainer to see. It's common sense for attentive people to see.

But common sense is exactly what seems to be lacking, especially by people who claim to be at the front of the The Common Sense Movement, a coal industry front group that bought ads on local radio attacking Mann's credibility and climate science (see here). This group joined dozens of other industry astroturf groups (fake grassroots movement) and public relations moves by the merchants of doubt to scientize politics. It is, as Mann noted today, a way to "wage politics as usual...to use science as a political football," including the climate denialism and sought-after political and professional persecution campaigns of current Republican presidential candidates, Senator James Inhofe (R-Ok), Representative Joe Barton (R-Tx), and the Republican Attorney General of Virginia. Mann, in short, has been the victim of a Republican War on Science. Climate science anyway. (David Frum and Kevin Silber have tried to point out that republicans aren't universally opposed to science.)

And it was interesting to hear Mann respond to questions. A lot about dealing with the "merchants of doubt" as Oreskes has called them and combating climate denialism. He dealt with being a political football. With education. With capitalism. Interestingly, he didn't attack capitalism but instead attacked the way we've structured our economy. Capitalism "has been stacked" he said. Toward what? Fossil fuel economics. In so many words, he was referring to sunk costs.

But what some of you might be most interested in was how he discussed shale gas drilling.

He talked about its lower carbon footprint as a burned fuel. It is "cleaner burning" with roughly one half the carbon footprint of coal per btu. However, and I think this might have stunned the powers that be, he cited a study released in the last week that showing that fugitive emissions from shale gas drilling might nullify the carbon benefits of burning natural gas. With 105 times the climate forcing potential over a 20-year span, methane leaked at 4% from shale gas operations demolishes the climate bridge fuel argument. As he seems to like to do, and many academics do for good reasons, he encouraged us to have discussions with evidence before us.

From a more radical sustainability view, some people would find Mann's talk a little disappointing. The personal steps he has taken (or at least the stated ones) were technological household fixes like changing lightbulbs and using lower-energy appliances. Don't get me wrong by any means, do it. But given our guest last week Richard Kahn, it seems that deeper and deeper transformations are needed. Mann certainly confronts the status quo of the big fossil fuel industry, but there was no call for a radical restructuring of all society right now. But...and it's a big BUT...he recognizes that climate change is a civilization-challenging issue.

Alarm? Yes. Alarmist? Maybe. Radical? Not really. I'd actually call him pretty calm.

Calm or not. You have to get a picture with a Nobel-Prize sharer.

$4.4 million in funding for "alternative" fuels

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has granted $4.4 million for "alternative" fuels. They've granted $15,600 for a solar electric charging station project in Dauphin County, $100,000 for biodiesel, $700,000 for electric cars, and about $3.6 million for natural gas related projects. Read their press release here.

The electric infrastructure grant of about $240,000 will go to Pittsburgh Regional Clean Cities for the Energy Corridor 376 project to establish 45 electric vehicle charging stations along Interstate 376 and surrounding areas. The pollution savings from electric vehicles are impressive. Also, "350 Green LLC will receive $450,000 for the development of the state’s electric vehicle infrastructure. This project will include the construction of approximately 20 Level III fast-charging stations and 72 charging stations."

DEP reports "Berks County Intermediate Unit will receive $100,000 to support the continued use of B20 biodiesel in its fleet."

On the natural gas front, several projects will receive grants. They include switching or augmenting several diesel fleets to natural gas fleets and aiding the construction of compressed natural gas stations.

“These projects are terrific for the state’s economy and the environment,” DEP Secretary Mike Krancer said. “We have an available, abundant, domestic, economical and clean-burning source of energy under our feet, and these projects put those resources to good use.”

In the world of sustainability, is this what you've envisioned for switching to alternative and sustainable fuels? What would you award money to for alternative energy sources and more sustainable use?

Increasing fuel efficiency

This morning on my walk to the bus station in Pine Grove Mills, PA, I saw gas at $3.69 a gallon. It's been higher than that recently and analysts predict that in coming years it will continue to climb over $4 a gallon. No doubt, filling the tank in our Honda is now a $60 endeavor. What's it like to have a Jeep or an Escalade? It's expensive.

Expense doesn't just go to families. There's the cost of obtaining, extracting, shipping, refining, and shipping all the petroleum to do all that. Obtaining all that oil and securing it has no small part in the wars in the Middle East which are in the trillions of dollars in taxpayer expense. We have record breaking oil disasters to deal with and their years of side effects. Later, there's the cost to air quality because of particulates and fumes. And don't forget the growing and ever looming costs greenhouse gases like CO2, and CO. That's a lot of consequence from just filling up your tank to get to work, take your kids to a baseball game or piano classes, or go on vacation.

But they are there: wallet to war and gulf to greenhouse.

Short of cutting individual car use what's to be done? The Pew Environment Group is calling on President Obama to increase fuel efficiency standards. They are asking you to help by signing on and telling the President to increase fuel efficiency to 60 miles per gallon for light trucks by 2025. They say in a press release, "With a 62 MPG standard, vehicle owners could see an average net savings of $6,475 over the lifetime of the car." That's nothing to ignore for most people in today's economy. Sectors of industry and so-called "consumer choice" will and have decried these standards as draconian and unrealistic, but the interconnected realities of peak oil, increasing global oil consumption, and climate change will make oil much more expensive and the cost of using it increasingly pressing as well.

So it looks as though we might aim at fuel use reduction as a goal. Reduce is the first of the "three R's" after all: Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

But if reduction is a genuine goal, then why not push even harder for even bigger reductions through bigger changes? In the same Pew press release they write, "[R]ecent polls show that Americans want to drive farther on a tank of gas, including one survey on behalf of Go60MPG, a coalition of advocacy groups seeking higher fuel-efficiency standards, which revealed 74 percent of those surveyed supporting 60 MPG by 2025." This is confusing.

Many people want more efficient cars which would reduce environmental and personal economic woes if they drive the same amount. More than doubling fuel economy could more than halve your gas payout if you drive the same distance. But if you double your driving distance you have neither saved fuel, money, nor the effects of burning that gas. Do you smell a Jevons Paradox?

What do you think? Should we go beyond fuel efficiency standards? Should we go beyond transportation to urban or national planning?

The Republican Congress's War on Clean Air and Water

Today, we will be talking to Ed Perry of the National Wildlife Federation. A few weeks ago he hosted a protest outside Pennsylvania Congressman Glenn Thompson (R) because of Thompson's support of some legislation that will gut environmental regulations, inhibit the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases, and will expand polluting industries' governmental entanglement.

Ed has recently written the following:

The House Majority Wants to Gut Environmental Protections

On Feb. 25, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a continuing budget resolution to keep the government operating and cut spending. But most people didn’t notice that it also was intended to gut environmental agencies and regulations that have protected our air, water and land for more than 40 years.

The U.S. Senate wouldn’t go along, but a House majority was willing to trash decades of bipartisan support for our most basic clean water and clean air protections in a full retreat from the fundamental expectation that elected leaders should safeguard our health and natural resources.

Instead of adding earmarks to its first budget resolution, this Congress added “oilmarks.” An oilmark is a prohibition attached to a spending bill that handcuffs regulators, forcing them to look the other way as polluters endanger the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the lands and waters that nurture fish and wildlife.

Oilmarks are like earmarks in that they don’t get debated and scrutinized, so members feel safe in voting for them. Of 51 amendments added to the original House continuing resolution, 14 were oilmarks aimed at letting politics override science and commonsense public-health protections.

Among other things, the oilmarks would have:

• Allowed 5,000 additional tons of hazardous air pollution and mercury emissions.
• Blocked new health standards to reduce soot pollution, which is particularly harmful to the lungs of our children.
• Blocked funding for climate change science and sensible regulations to start reducing carbon dioxide pollution from oil refineries and power plants.
• Blocked science-based restoration of the Chesapeake Bay, Klamath Basin, San Francisco Bay Delta and Florida waters.
• Blocked new rules and guidance to prevent hazardous coal ash from entering water supplies as happened in the 2008 Tennessee disaster.
• Blocked new rules and guidance to protect stream valleys and wetlands from the dumping of waste from mountain top-removal mining and other sources.

The total budget savings for the 14 oilmarks would have been zero dollars. Not one dime would have been shaved from the deficit, which ostensibly was the purpose of this bill.

While adding all kinds of oilmarks to the spending bill, the House rejected the one amendment, offered by Rep. Markey, D-Mass., that would have eliminated billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to oil companies. Closing a royalty payment loophole for oil companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico could save taxpayers $53 billion in the coming years, but the amendment was defeated.

At least Congressmen Glenn Thompson and Bill Shuster were consistent. They voted for every one of these oilmarks and then voted against the only amendment that would have reduced the deficit; the one that would have cut taxpayer subsidies to the oil companies.

The sheer audacity and scope of the assault on environmental protection makes you wonder if these folks are out of touch with their constituents. Poll after poll shows Americans want Congress to protect air and water regulations and take action on climate change.

A national survey found that two thirds of Americans — including 54 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of Independents — said the EPA should “reduce carbon pollution without delay.” One poll question revealed particularly strong support for clean air updates the EPA is putting forward: 66 percent of Americans — including 54 percent of Republicans and 61 percent of Independents — favor stricter limits on the release of toxic chemicals such as mercury, lead, and arsenic from coal-fired power plants and other industrial facilities.

Our representatives may say they don’t want a bunch of unelected bureaucrats setting carbon limits for the United States; they want Congress to do it. But what they really mean is that they don’t want any limits at all.

Last year, Congress had an opportunity to pass clean energy legislation to reduce carbon emissions and virtually every representative who voted for the oilmarks voted against the bill. They continue to vote against clean energy legislation, yet they have no alternatives.

Is this what Americans want this new Congress to do? Assault the agency that has effectively reduced air and water pollution and set environmental standards that make our country’s quality of life the envy of the world?

Really?

You know, not long ago our government reflected Americans’ strong environmental values. The Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act were passed with bipartisan support in the 1970s, with Republican representatives and senators leading the way. And when Congress updated the Clean Air Act in 1990 to protect thousands of lives and curb acid rain, the House passed the legislation with an overwhelming vote of 401-25. Now it appears all of that has changed.

Fortunately, the U.S. Senate refused to go along with the House oilmarks in last month’s temporary budget resolution. But with another resolution coming soon, let’s hope the Senate — with the help of Pennsylvania Sens. Bob Casey and Pat Toomey — stands firm again and continues to support the EPA and its efforts to protect our air, land and water.

- Ed Perry, PA Outreach Coordinator, National Wildlife Federation

Listen in today from 4-5 pm on The Lion.

What's worse? Public nudity or dirty fossil fuel?

In the U.S. we have lots of prohibitions about dirtiness and a lot of that is related to sex and body image. I remember listening to an interview with the philosopher Peter Singer about ethics and the interviewer asked him about morality and he talked about the ethics of eating animals and harming the environment. Sex or sexual "dirtiness" were not much of a concern.

Well what is dirty? Coal. Natural gas. Oil. At least, that's what EcoAction said in a protest yesterday at Penn State's University Park campus. The Daily Collegian reports:

Eco-Action members said they are concerned the university is not seriously considering using renewable energy.

“The West Campus Steam Plant consists of 95 percent of all campus heat and hot water. We want the university to do more extensive research on all of the different types of renewable energy like wind, thermal or geothermal energy,” Eco-Action Vice President Stefan Nagy (junior-economics) said.

One month ago, the club marched to Penn State President Graham Spanier’s office to voice its concerns. A coalition was formed between the students, faculty and administration to create goals for reducing carbon emissions, Nagy said.

“The march was a big success, but we don’t want our progress to be forgotten in the public’s eye so we came up with the idea for this protest,” he said. “A lot of issues still need to be resolved and we don’t want our voices to fade out.”

That's one way to keep attention up.